Zum Inhalt springen

Seite:Marsh Hallig 1856.djvu/231

Faan Wikipedia
Detdiar sidj as efterluket wurden.
231

THE PARTING.

with all the variety of his acquirements, with all his
culture, seemed only to live for the duties of his appar-
ently insignificant post. They respected her loving
nature, her quiet management in the domestic circle,
and in both, their contentment in a more than humble
earthly lot ; one in which thousands accustomed, as
they, to something better, would have been completely
miserable. They did not know that a hallig pastor was
little respected, from the very fact of his being such,
and that this title is sufficient to inspire many with a
feeling of contempt ; but had they known this, they
would have considered the privations and self-denials,
the weariness and the dangers of such a position, and
would have represented the insignificance of the salary,
the necessity of busying himself with household labors,
and even the care of the sheep — the chief source in-
indeed from which his salary was derived — his isolation
from the world and all intellectual intercourse ; they
would have spoken of all these, to such of Hold's pro-
fessional brethren as might be disposed to complain of
a want of congenial society and means to keep up with
the progress of knowledge. Has the clergyman — their
defense would have been something of this sort — whom
you admire for his refinement of manner and his bear-
ing in the highest circles, whom you have placed among
the number of well-informed, highly cultivated, even
learned men — has he passed the best years of his youth
and manhood as a hallig pastor ? Has he tried what it
is to pass from a rich world of enjoyment to such a
state of privation, with a heart beating warmly for the
whole human race to be transplanted to such a forgot-
ten soil, taken from a blooming paradise of youthful